Intertextuality

The concept of intertextuality is based on Bakhtin and Voloshinov. Texts are produced within an 'intertextual context'.  That is, texts 'have histories, they belong to historical series' (Fairclough 1989: 127).  Texts are related to other texts within their intertextual context through intertextuality, whereby a current text contains elements of a previous text.  Intertextuality often involves reported speech, which Voloshinov characterises as 'speech within speech, utterance within utterance, and at the same time also speech about speech, utterance about utterance' (1973: 115)   Reported speech is especially common in news discourse.  According to Monika Bednarek, ‘one of the most characteristic features of newspaper language is its "embededness": much of what features in the news is actually reported speech' (2006: 59). For example, as John Richardson (2007: 102) notes, 'a news report may contain elements of a press release, or a quote from a source either involved in the reported action/event (information) or commenting on it (evaluation)'.